


The Adventures of Cadence, Clarence, Clark, and Pete

by DhampirsDrinkEspresso



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Allergy Medication, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Children's Books, F/M, Fluff, Future Child, No actual pregnancy discussions or depictions, Rey is Benadryl-drunk, Reylo Baby mentioned, Writing, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25912015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DhampirsDrinkEspresso/pseuds/DhampirsDrinkEspresso
Summary: Rey is writing and she sounds distressed so Ben checks on her.She trailed off, hand still moving on the trackball, presumably to cut and paste again, before making a sound of disgust and repeatedly hitting the backspace button with increasing force.The button popped off and flew across the desk, where it lay trembling on the edge of the surface. Rey looked down at it, surprise and irritation at war in her expression. Releasing the trackball, she scooped the key up into her hand and glared down at the offending plastic. “That‘ll teach you,” she mumbled, closing her hand, squeezing it in her fist. “Gonna hang this little creep up as a warning,” she mumbled, fumbling at the tape dispenser.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	The Adventures of Cadence, Clarence, Clark, and Pete

**Author's Note:**

> Random silliness inspired by something my husband tagged me in and I shared with a facebook group. Not even a fic, really, more "a few hours in the life."

“OH. MY. GOD! _WHY?_ _Why_ would you do this to meeeeeeee?” The plaintive cry ended in a low moan and that was enough to drive him into the other room.

“Rey? You okay?”

Another low moan reverberated from where her face was smashed to the keyboard and desk. He felt laughter bubbling up in his chest. She was adorable.

_Don’t laugh…don’t laugh, Solo…DO NOT LAUGH._

He couldn’t stop the small chuckle that escaped, and her head snapped up, eyes narrowed and a red crease across her forehead—from the space bar, maybe? He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door jamb. “So, writing’s going well, then?”

Rey turned away with a sniff. “I’ll have you know this is all _your_ fault, Ben Solo! I warned you not to let me near the keyboard when I was on allergy medication.”

“I wouldn’t say I _let_ you, Rey. In fact, I clearly recall physically carrying you to bed and tucking you in tightly enough you may as well have been tied down.”

She glanced back at him and rolled her eyes, muttering something unintelligible. She focused again on the monitor, brow furrowed. “What does that even _mean_?” she mumbled, “Who is Clark and where did he come from? I would _never_ name a character _Clark._ ” Her hand rolled over the trackball, clicking the buttons, still muttering to herself. He assumed she was cutting Clark from the document and pasting that section of text into a new document in case she for some reason decided she wanted him back later.

“Why is there a talking sloth? And a…” she made a confused face, nose wrinkled. “A water buffalo? Apparently named Cadence? What the bloody…”

She trailed off, hand still moving on the trackball, presumably to cut and paste again, before making a sound of disgust and repeatedly hitting the backspace button with increasing force.

The button popped off and flew across the desk, where it lay trembling on the edge of the surface. Rey looked down at it, surprise and irritation at war in her expression. Releasing the trackball, she scooped the key up into her hand and glared down at the offending plastic. “That‘ll teach you,” she mumbled, closing her hand, squeezing it in her fist. “Gonna hang this little creep up as a warning,” she mumbled, fumbling at the tape dispenser.

“Rey?”

“Hm?” She gave up on the tape and picked up the stapler, staring at it a moment before sighing.

“Rey, have you had allergy medication again today?”

She stared down at the backspace key in her hand. “Ummmmm…oh, yeah! I can’t have that one brand of tea anymore. It’s got…um…something…” She seemed to be thinking very hard about what that something was.

He shook his head and walked into the extra room they’d converted into an office-slash-writing-studio. “Come on, time for bed,” he said, pulling her desk chair back.

“‘M fine,” she slurred as he attempted to get her standing. “Needa get this down.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it, and I’ll make note and remind you after you drink some water and get some sleep?”

“Mkay,” she half-yawned, allowing him to lead her from the room as she mumbled about a centaur named Pete and kittens in tanks. He made sure she got into bed without falling. She was asleep before he managed to turn out the light. He filled her water bottle from the filtered kitchen tap and placed it on the nightstand beside her, staring down at her for a moment as she cuddled into his pillow. Her mouth was slightly open, and he winced as he realized she was drooling.

There was a puddle.

On his pillow.

He shook his head and went back to the living room, retrieving his laptop and debating a moment on whether he could justify joining her for an afternoon nap. He sighed and shook his head, returning to their shared office space instead. A couple more hours and he could maybe get to a stopping point on the presentation that he was quite sure was going to kill him.

Why he had ever agreed to work with Snoke as an independent contractor after successfully getting away from First Order Technologies he would never know. The money was good, but he would have been okay.

Would have had to wait a little longer or go to his mother about the purchase he was planning to make soon but they all would have been better off.

Still, once this final project was done so was his contract and he could make a clean break (again) and try to forget Snoke had ever existed.

A little over three hours later Rey wandered in with a yawn, carrying her water bottle. She stopped behind his chair and kissed the top of his head before turning to her own desk.

They had realized early on in their attempts to share workspace that they couldn’t face each other and still concentrate, so Ben’s desk was turned towards a blank wall and Rey’s faced the window. His desktop was arranged with military precision, nothing not-work-related except for a framed photo of the two of them propped safely in the corner, and a toy car that looked like the one his father had treasured all throughout Ben’s childhood. Both items were courtesy of Rey and he smiled every time he looked at them.

He stretched and quietly turned his chair so he could watch her as she settled in to work for a while. Her headphones were already on and he could hear the occasional stray notes. Screaming symphonic rock…not the most promising sound, although at least it wasn’t so bad as to make her break out the Gregorian chants or bluegrass.

Rey’s desk was an explosion of colored sticky notes and animal shaped paperclips. She had little toys in what seemed like every empty space, and a row of potted succulents on the windowsill. Movie and theater tickets, lottery scratch offs that hadn’t won, expired coupons for the local diner, and assorted photos of what felt like every person Rey had ever met were pinned haphazardly to a cork board beside the window.

On the other side of the window were an array of sticky notes with snatches of dialogue, character descriptions, and one word reminders that made no sense to Ben but helped Rey in organizing her thoughts on whatever writing project she was working on at the time. Mixed in among the brightly colored squares of paper were postcards, pictures hastily torn from magazines, and print outs of actors who looked the part of her characters. And memes, heaven help him the memes. There was no bare wall visible on Rey’s side of the room within his reach (because yes, of course he helped her hang things if she needed them higher than she could reach without climbing). Under the cork board in what Rey claimed was a place of honor hung a row of paper scraps and crumpled napkins bearing the things Ben had sketched for her as she told him about what she wrote (or wanted to write). He’d meant them as silly little throw-aways, just something to make her smile, but she kept them all. She had a box full of others, but her favorites stayed by the desk.

He watched as she absently typed in her password and unlocked her desktop computer and read back through the documents she’d worked on earlier, occasionally nodding or shaking her head before turning her attention to the keyboard. She pulled off her headphones and turned, knowing he was watching her. “Ben? What happened to my backspace key?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really. Something about Clark, and a warning to the other keys, maybe?”

“Pretty much. You, ah, you refused to put it down. It was your war prize. It’s probably in the bed. I’ll go check. Maybe we can fix it again.” He kissed her temple and left the room, chuckling to himself as she groaned again, sounding more like a wounded animal than the woman he was planning to marry someday.

“I love writing…really I do…it’s fun,” he heard her mutter, and he knew without having to see it that she was rolling her eyes and smiling.

_The Adventures of Cadence, Clarence, Clark, and Pete_ was her first bestselling children’s book, her transition from novels and short stories that did respectably well and were fun but frustrating to write and edit. She managed to talk Ben into doing the artwork for it, and it launched a series that kept them both quite contentedly busy for years to come.

He proposed the day they signed the contracts with his mother’s publishing house. Rey said yes (of course she said yes) and they were married inside a month, despite his mother’s protests that she wanted to throw them a proper wedding.

She stopped complaining once she had a grandchild to spoil.


End file.
